


Mai Tais and Kittens

by Larathia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 10:36:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14211315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larathia/pseuds/Larathia
Summary: At the end of all the battles must come rest. Shiro hasn't really planned on retiring, ever. The others, however, saw the day coming. Especially Keith. And a plan was made.Pure fluff. I'm of the "make sure Shiro has a happy ending" brigade.





	Mai Tais and Kittens

The day was always going to come. It wasn’t that Shiro was older than the other paladins – five years or so wasn’t honestly _that_ big a difference. It was the _damage_.

It was spending a year as a captive gladiator, fighting for survival and alternating those fights with being experimented on. It was having his arm cut off and replaced with a prosthetic. It was being dropped from great heights without a parachute or jetpack, landing on hard ground, having bites taken out of him by wild alien beasts he didn’t even know the name of, and a hell of a lot of being shot at both in and out of the cockpit. It was the psychological stress of looking after four space-stranded kids when he couldn’t sleep half the time without nightmares, and the added stress of having the literal weight of the universe on his shoulders.

No one could take that indefinitely. No one should have to, or be asked to.

Shiro had originally intended to leave Keith in charge of the paladins. That lasted about as long as it took for him to say it out loud; Keith clearly and firmly refused.

Shiro was the only one surprised.

Lance took over leadership, with Allura, and the two agreed they’d search for new paladins. There was a whole universe to choose from. _Someone_ was bound to appeal to the Lions. And Shiro went to his quarters to pack.

There wasn’t much. He’d not had the choice to bring anything from Earth, and he hadn’t really been in a mindset to collect souvenirs. A few tools, some clothes. It felt like...abandoning his duty. But he really couldn’t do it anymore. He needed a rest before ...before he got someone killed.

Keith was behind him, a small duffel over one shoulder. “You ready?”

Shiro turned. “Why are _you_ packed?”

“Because I’m going with you,” said Keith. “This is not the sudden event you seem to think it is. Everyone saw this coming.”

Shiro shouldered his bag. “So you’re, what? My minder?”

Keith’s head tilted. Something almost but not quite a smile flickered briefly across his face. “Your guide.”

“My what now?” asked Shiro, frowning. Keith was up to something, clearly.

Keith took his hand and tugged him forward. Out of his quarters – now no longer – and toward the hangar. The others were waiting, with tearful hugs goodbye. The work had to continue, after all. Keith settled into the pilot’s seat, and Shiro took the copilot’s seat because it was that or try to lift Keith bodily from his chosen spot. He knew better than to try.

“You don’t think I might have plans?” asked Shiro pointedly.

“I think you intended to go talk to the rebel leaders about helping them,” said Keith, powering the ship up. “And they’d find you things to do until you got bored or restless and got yourself blown up in some stupid skirmish a lone Lion could sort out.”

“And you have a better idea, I take it,” said Shiro.

“Yup,” said Keith, and there was no mistaking the smugness of the tone.

~*~

The world was, as worlds went, gorgeous even from space. Especially to an Earth-attuned eye. The seas were blue, the clouds fluffy and white. There were long, long chains of islands girdling the equator like a fashionable studded belt.

“How did you find _this_ place?” asked Shiro. “What’s here?”

“Oh, there’s a rebel base on the northern continent,” said Keith. “Nothing big. Medical stores. They ship them from here to where they’re needed.” But that wasn’t where he was flying. The ship was coming down over the equatorial island chains. “Matt told me about it ages ago, and I took a look around.”

The ship touched down on one of the larger islands, on a sandstone strip that looked artificially fused. It blended in well with the landscape, though. There was no one here, but Keith unstrapped to get out anyway, grabbing his bag. “Come on.”

Shiro grabbed his own bag and followed, getting deeply suspicious. “What did you do?”

But once outside – oh, the air smelled fantastic. Rich and clean and floral with maybe a hint of actual, water-type rain. And from ground level he could see that there was a sandstone path from the landing strip into the thick, vine-wrapped trees.

There was a house in there.

Clearly, it had been built by someone who did not, as a rule, build houses. It didn’t have that ‘could have been prefabricated’ look to it. Ranch style, the roof had been planted with grasses to make it harder to see from the air. The walls appeared to be sandstone brick, of irregular and interlocking shapes so that mortar wasn’t required. Windows were wide open to the island breezes, but seemed sturdy enough to handle tropical storms.

And...there were kittens. Heard before they were seen, little high pitched mews from under branches and behind trunks and a few from overhead.

Keith was giving Shiro a look that clearly said _gotcha_.

Shiro, for his part, was just staring. “When did _this_ happen?”

“ _This_ ,” said Keith, mimicking his tone, “has been my free time for the last year. I told you, you taking a break wasn’t a surprise to anyone. We knew you wouldn’t leave before you had to, though. So ...I asked around, heard about this world, got started.” He nodded to the house. “It’s yours.”

Shiro absently scooped up a black kitten as he made his way inside. It did have the hallmarks of Keith’s work – not professionally trained, but solidly built nonetheless. The floor was hardwood, and from its colors, the wood had probably come from a dozen different worlds, just smoothed and polished and laid down in a kind of arboreal rainbow. There was a fireplace – though who knew when it would be cool enough to be needed – and a wood burning stove. All very, very low tech, but not uncomfortable. There were rooms enough that yes, all the paladins would have a place to stay if they visited, but the beds were hammocks, hooked up to rings set in the stone walls, so that when there were no guests there was no guest _bed_ either, taking up space.

The kitten in his hands decided it wanted to be on his shoulder instead. Every room had little shelves on the walls, at varying heights. Shiro realized they would be cat-paths if no decorations were put on them.

Keith was waiting outside. So Shiro went back out and asked, “Kittens?”

“Slightly lower stress than people,” said Keith. “And there is a comm. Officially this is a sanctuary. Yours. Now and then people will turn up looking to adopt a cat. Or drop one off. The house’s lower level has med-pods calibrated for them. The Balmera crystal it all runs off of will last centuries after you’re gone.”

Shiro looked around. There were dozens already. Running, playing, napping. “ _Why_ , Keith?”

Keith gave him a look that suggested this was a stupid question. He tugged Shiro’s arm to follow him. Around the house, to another angle from which the beach could be seen, and the breezes were unimpeded by trees. Here a hammock had been strung up, firmly anchored to the trees. “Test it out,” he said. “Fifteen minutes. If you don’t get it then, we can go wherever you want. Drop in at the base up north if you want.”

Giving Keith a suspicious look, Shiro carefully got into the hammock. Once he had, Keith put another kitten on him, so now there were two. Both seemed quite happy to consider Shiro’s broad chest a perfect napping spot. Their purrs rumbled through his shirt.

Fifteen minutes, huh?

The breezes swung the hammock. The ocean waves were steady in his ears, with the purring of the kittens and the warmth of the day. He didn’t even realize he’d dozed off until he woke with happy kittens licking his face with tiny rough tongues.

Devious bastard. But Shiro couldn’t deny feeling _better_. Like some muscle that had been tense so long he’d forgotten it could ever be otherwise had just begun to relax.

He got out of the hammock and headed for the house, nearby kittens trailing in his wake as the most interesting thing currently happening. There was smoke rising from the small kitchen chimney. As he neared, he realized it was fish. And Keith, shirtless and clearly drying off, was doing the grilling.

The shape of the plan, if such it could be called, was coming clearer. “I _am_ entirely capable of taking care of myself,” he pointed out.

“You are,” said Keith simply. “This isn’t retirement unless you want it to be. This is just the next step. Those happen.”

That was...a really big fish, actually, now that Shiro got a better look at it. “How did you catch that?”

Keith blinked. Looked at the fish, then at Shiro, and shrugged. The question clearly made no sense. “The usual way you catch fish?”

“And that is…?” because that thing would snap any normal line. Or net.

“Dive in the water and stab it to death?” said Keith. “I don’t relax the same way you do.”

Clearly not, but the kittens were absolutely in love with him for it. He wore loose pants, probably as protection against tiny claws trying to climb him to reach the stove. A hefty grilled portion was put onto a plate, and passed to Shiro with a drink that had an alcoholic haze over it. “May want to stick to chairs, or eat standing.” Once his hands were free he started plucking pleading kittens off his pants.

Shiro couldn’t help it; he started laughing.

Keith smiled. Yes. It had been a good plan.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd mentioned that i thought Shiro deserved to end the series on a tropical island, with endless mai tais and buried in kittens, so often that I decided to write it out. So sue me.


End file.
